


haircuts

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Coping, Cousy RomFest 2k17, Daisy's childhood, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Haircuts, Hurt/Comfort, Making Out, Male-Female Friendship, Punk Rock, young coulson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-12 20:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10498845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: Daisy gets a haircut from Coulson inside and outside of the Framework. Written for Cousy RomFest 2k17 - DAY 4 · 30 March, haircut





	

There's no time.

They're literally out of time, and it feels like she can't stand this place a moment longer.

She wants to wash every bit of it off of her.

Staring back at her reflection in the mirror, she turns on the tap and splashes at her face.

Living inside her own skin and hurting people she loves? Yeah, that crushed her.

Even if the people she loves told her it wasn't her fault, it left her more hollow than she ever had been.

Reaching for the towel, she yanks it free and presses her face into it.

HYDRA.

She's so angry.

Her voice finds her and screams into the towel, muffling the sound.

Of course, it's loud enough that it draws him into the bathroom with her.

"Daisy?"

That she's had to play by their rules to escape detection. This mission is everything, and she's managed to get Mack back on the outside again.

Back to Yo Yo. Hope.

A sense of relief, and at the same time, the pain of making him have to give up his daughter again.

It makes her shake, and she can't tell if the anger is evolving into something threatening, weaker.

She is not into burning books like they are in the Framework, but when she finds the Darkhold, she's going to destroy it.

"Daisy."

For all of the pain and grief it has caused. For twisting their regrets into shackles to silence them.

This world is so wrong. It's designed to crush them and humiliate them and convince them they can't fight back.

She feels like she's wearing it, and not just on the inside. It's everywhere.

"Daisy."

Of course she'll do whatever it takes.

His hands on her arm jostles her lightly to wake her out of her thoughts, like grounding, drawing her back to this place.

Coulson.

He looks a bit shocked at her expression. She remembers how only a day ago, he'd seen her as dangerous and unpredictable.

She was gone for six months. Six months. Because she couldn't deal with him looking at her like this. But he was always there.

Now he's dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, without glasses, seeming less like a schoolteacher and more like something...real.

"Help me."

He keeps staring at her, trying to work it out, when she realizes she didn't even ask out loud.

"Help me," she repeats, this time pushing the words out.

His face changes then. Into a determined, calm expression and he drops his hands from her and then peers at their reflections in the mirror.

She thinks about how she saw Lola, in the most unexpected places in those six months. Reminding her, even though she didn't want to believe it.

"Okay."

He leaves the bathroom and she listens to him shuffling around in the drawers of the kitchen, opening and closing doors.

When he comes back, he's holding a large pair of scissors, and she frowns, not understanding at first.

Then he looks at their reflections again, turns her to face the mirror, and lifts his hand to touch the ends of her long hair.

It's so silly. There's no time for this, but she wants it.

"Do it," she agrees, as he raises the scissors in his other hand, shaking slightly, and slides them between a lock of the hair and shears it away.

She watches it fall to the counter, and then lets go of the breath she was holding.

Release.

Closing her eyes, she imagines that they're not in this place, and hears the scissors do their work.

His steady, even breaths close by, as the weight of the hair falls away from her. Piece by piece.

"All done," he finally says, and sets the scissors down on the bathroom counter top.

The metal noise echoes briefly, and she opens her eyes again, and raises them at the reflection standing there, hair cut to her shoulders.

It feels right.

He smiles at her, gently, not trying to force her to say or do anything.

Instead she turns into his arms and hugs him against her, practically knocking the breath out of him.

  
+++

  
Her hair is a part of her identity that she's in control of.

The nuns at the orphanage gave her a cute little bob so they wouldn't have to work with it.

The foster parents she had never thought to let her have her way about it. They just cut it like the nuns did, usually so she would look the same way just before they sent her back.

Once she was on her own, she didn't cut her hair for years.

Living in her van just made her even more determined that being homeless wasn't going to change who she was.

Even if it meant curling irons and blow dryers in gas station bathrooms and washes in the dirty sink.

When she became a SHIELD agent, when they went dark, really, she decided on bangs. Blunt and new and maybe because they came with a regimen that required upkeep, the way she was training her body to do the same.

After she became Inhuman, after she lost her parents, after Coulson's arm, she cut the length off. Free from the weight of it, or acknowledging the loss, she's still not entirely sure.

Now it's not clear how she feels about where she's arrived.

Too public to hide, too Inhuman to settle for something that would seem like she wants to conform.

And she does not want to conform.

The Sokovia Accords still haven't been dismantled, and she wonders what it will take, really, to bring her people together with them.

That won't stop her from trying, though.

She sees Coulson in the hallway this afternoon, and notices he's had a haircut.

Does he do the same thing, in his own way? When he was carving, it was so close, and that could've been that he was worrying about his hands, the way they'd started to shake, to not be anyone's problem.

When she realizes that she's staring, she looks away, knowing that she's already been caught, and he glances up at her, a curious expression on his face.

He hasn't shaved in a few days, she thinks, when he moves closer to her. That's new.

How does she find the time to think of this stuff with everything else crammed into her head?

Running and rebuilding SHIELD publicly, the Secret Warriors as a black ops team, saving a world that rejects them.

Then there's the media, always commenting on her appearance, analyzing how she looks, the expressions on her face even when she's shutting down Fascists, it's about how she seems angry, not the work they're doing.

"Must be nice, to be in the dark," she tells him wistfully.

He gives her a dubious expression and then straightens slightly. "Is this about me not shaving?" He runs a hand over his face self-consciously.

"No," she replies, trying not to smile at his assumption. "As you were. I don't mind the beard-ish thing there growing on your face."

She crosses her arms and watches his expression changed into something mildly pleased, at the idea that she might not mind his face.

"I'm not growing a beard," he sighs, then blinking, like he's thinking and shrugs. "I just didn't feel like it."

She makes an agreeing noise and nods.

She doesn't feel like it, either, but they're interrupted.

Duty calls.

  
+++

  
"Are you sure about this?"

"Yeah," she mutters, taking a swig out of the vodka bottle. "You've done it before."

He sighs and lifts the clippers up towards her hair.

"Maybe you should think about this, I'm not-"

"I've been shot, and I'm pissed, Coulson. So, just do it."

"Is that an order?" he asks, cocky, but also a little bit defiantly. After all, it's her blood on his shirt, but he's handling this well.

"Nope," she shrugs, and then regrets it when the ache sears through her shoulder at the motion. "Asking as a friend."

"Okay."

He sets the clippers down on the sink, and then exits into the safehouse as she turns, too sharply and presses her hand against the bandages, calls his name after him.

After several minutes of silence, she looks up at the bathroom ceiling, and closes her eyes, when she hears the sound of the music starting up.

Loud, drums and guitars all at once, punk rock music, and she starts to duck her head out of the door in surprise, when he appears again.

"You can't get mad at me later," he tells her pointedly over the din, hefting the stool carried in his prosthetic hand into the small space. "Sit."

"I promise," she says, feeling the smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. "Punk music? Where did you get-"

"Do not ask, I will not disclose," he promptly replies, patting the seat as she eases onto it.

She looks at them together in the mirror, and then hands the bottle of vodka back to him, as he rolls his eyes and then takes a drink out of it, winces, then gives it back to her.

"Yikes, that's shitty vodka," he nods, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I'm sorry, should I get you something more refined to dull my pain?" she asks, all amusement.

"Head down," he orders her, and then puts his thumb against the back of her head, as he reaches for the clippers with his right hand.

She laughs at him, putting the bottle between her knees as the buzzing noise starts to echo through the bathroom.

It tickles a little, as he runs it along the nape of her neck, slowly.

"Be still," he shushes, his voice sounding focused, and on edge as she feels the hair fall to the floor.

She closes her eyes, almost being lulled by the sound, feeling the vodka start to do its work.

"When's the last time you did this?"

"It's been awhile," he says after a moment, like he's thinking about it. "Before I joined SHIELD."

"And you're not going to tell me about it?"

"What do you want to know?" he asks, and she can hear tension in his voice. Concentration, and something else unfamiliar.

She kind of wants to know everything, for it to spill out of him, without having to ask.

"When I was figuring things out," he finally offers. "After my mom died."

His mother was in the Framework. Like it was yesterday.

The clippers shut off, and he runs his fingers along the side of her hair, cropped close against the side of her head.

"It looks so cool," she says, mostly amazed at the way he's touching her right now. Like he has before, but now how it feels up against her scalp.

It feels good. Right.

She stands up and sets the vodka down on the sink top and turns around to him, thinks that she can finally pick out the band playing this song.

"Descendants?" she questions, touching her fingers along the side of her head where his were, tussles the hair around so it falls over one eye.

"Yes," he whispers, his eyes gone wide and his lips parted, as she takes a step closer to him. "'Marriage'."

"You're a romantic," she says, tilting her chin up at him, shorter than he is without her boots on, but tall enough to put a hand along his shoulder.

"Not too short?" he asks, a little teasing now, raising his foot up against the wall the leaning back against it, tapping it on and off to the drum beat.

"Uh uh."

She presses up on her toes, bringing them to the same height, and he meets her halfway as she kisses him, letting the music pull them along and set the pace.

He is right, that vodka is pretty shitty, but this is not. In fact, all of this is great and she pulls at his shirt enough to bring him stumbling back with her against the sink, getting his mouth open so she can slip her tongue inside.

His hand braces him, stopping them from falling completely forward, forcing them apart for a moment, and she watches him bite his lower lip, study her expression for a moment before he rocks his body against hers, kisses her again.

She forgets to be careful and jerks with the pain in her shoulder, hissing as he stops and puts his hand on her arm, trying to figure out what she needs.

"Help me," she whines, relaxing her arm complaining in her socket, and he looks down to see her trying to open the button to her jeans.

He slowly starts to smile.

 


End file.
